Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Farah Wants Secession Too

Joseph Farah is so upset over Obama’s reelection that he is now openly calling for secession, saying that good Christian nutballs like him should “declare our separation and independence once again, just as our courageous founders did 236 years ago.”

In short, as I have written before, America is flirting with profound judgment. If those of us who disapprove of the same-sex marriage, abortion, tyranny, collectivism, the coerced subversion of religious freedom and forced taxpayer support for the spreading of ungodly, unbiblical values and laws want to avoid that coming judgment, it’s time to separate ourselves wholly from participation…

America is a big country that is thoroughly permeated with this treasonous, immoral, adulterous lifestyle.

But I am convinced we’ve got to begin forming new communities of the faithful and declare our separation and independence once again, just as our courageous founders did 236 years ago. Like them, we need to be prepared to defend ourselves, our families, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Barring a miracle, I don’t believe reconciliation with those who have gone awhoring is a possibility. I’m sorry, I just don’t have much in common with Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and George Soros and Bruce Springsteen (even though we are both from New Jersey) and George Clooney and these other looneys.

Barack Obama was right about one thing: Whatever it once was, America is no longer a Christian nation. Our cultural institutions have been taken over by worshippers of other gods. Government at nearly every level has embraced a worldview that denies God. And now it’s clear that more than half the population has turned its back on God and His Commandments.

Joe, you are perfectly free to leave and find the kind of theocratic dictatorship you want. I hear that Saudi Arabia is nice, or maybe you would prefer Iran. Vatican City might be willing to take you as a political refugee, seeing as how its ruler, Pope Benedict, shares so many of your views (but not your religion. You won’t mind converting to Roman Catholicism, right?) You might even find refuge in the Tibetan government in exile; I hear the Dalai Lama is a swell guy.

Well, I think he his secession is a moot point. Joseph has had a long bitter divorced with reality. It was one of the messiest splits ever. Reality ended up with kept the house, kids and the observable universe, while little Joseph only kept the unicorn that shits fake Kenyan birth certificates. Since, then reality has gotten a restraining order against Farah, so I don’t think he can get within 500 feet of the observable universe.

But I am convinced we’ve got to begin forming new communities of the faithful and declare our separation and independence once again.

Sounds like a great idea to me. That can be perfectly legal, depending on the details.

The Amish, Hutterites, and FLDS do it.

All Farah and his fellow fundie xian kooks have to do is live in rural areas and not watch TV or log onto the internet.

Out of sight, out of mind. The rest of us would gladly kick in some money so they can build walled compounds if they promise to never come out again. It’s a win win situation. They can have their New Dark Age and we are rid of baggage that our society just drags along.

@7 I didn’t think that through, you are right membership dues should not be refunded. I was imagining cases where someone sank everything they had into a religious commune (ha!) and leaving would mean sleeping on the street. However even then a better deal would be to use the kind of principles followed in divorce rather than a strict ‘you get back every penny you put in’ rule.

If rMoney had won and liberals and others in the reality-based community had suggested this, the conservatives would literally be calling for our heads – it’s sedition after all.

It’s related, I guess, to the “let’s take our country back” attitude – that conservatives are the rightful owners of this country and that liberals, non-whites, non-males, non-religious (or even non-xtian), non-straights, etc., are not real and full Americans.

OK, neither Joe nor any of his fellow fundies get to secede until they pay off their share of the cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They supported King George II when he went to war to prove he had a bigger d*ck than his Daddy, so they need to pay the bill. No war-and-dash here.

I’m increasingly perceiving modern-day secession efforts where children are the analog victims relative to slaves in the mid-19th century.

In antebellum times many people residing in the confederate states were not enjoying equal protection under the law. So when states sought to exercise power to secede, they were doing so in order to continue to deny these American victims their individual rights and the constitutional privileges and immunities of being American and/or living in the U.S.

This tyranny was the single most important premise that justified the union obstructing the confederate states from seceding, not merely morally, but constitutionally and philosophically consistent with the underlying premises upon which the Constitution stands and elaborated upon on in the DofI. In fact it was Abe Lincoln that re-popularized the DofI, precisely in order to use it as a primary premise on ending slavery and obstructing the efforts of secessionists by claiming that just governance requires government to protect the rights of people, not enslave them.

Of course of all the persecuted groups in the antebellum era, black slaves were the most victimized because they had no freedom of travel, or freedom of any kind for that matter. Today one could make the argument that if Texas seceded, the adult groups Texas secessionists or any red state seeks to marginalize and deprive of their liberty rights could move out of the state. But not children, they would be abused even more than they’re abused now.

As more groups win the protection of their rights equal to those who benefit from such now, I think we’ll increasingly see how the rights of children are wanting; to the point we can observe wide-spread abuse not only of children’s rights, but children themselves. And it is children who we should point to when arguing a state can not secede, precisely because those children are American or within U.S. jurisdiction and therefore the federal government has a constitutional obligation to defend their rights from state-level tyranny.

@jesse #11 – I did a little more digging, and I found a Supreme Court decision that also said “No,” Texas v. White, handed down on April 12, 1869:

When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.

These guys can always negotiate with Native American reservations for entry and living. But somehow I expect that Farah’s concept of “secession” includes “getting our pick of good land and taking all the infrastructure the USG has constructed and paid for with us when we go.”

“America is a big country that is thoroughly permeated with this treasonous, immoral, adulterous lifestyle.”

Oddly enough, what every happens or doesn’t happen in my bed room has precisely -0- to do with what happens to the country as a whole.

If a State did want to seceded, I think if you passed a constitutional amendment to that effect they could. Mere declaration on part of a State unilaterally would fail. Given the loonies in WI, they might try it at the rate they are going.

There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.

I read that as Texas could secede if all the other state government unanimously agreed to kick them out.

As a philosophical matter I do think in many circumstances a community should be allowed to take on as much self government as they can handle and want all the way up to full sovereignty if appropriate. However, any right to self government for groups follows from the right of individuals to control their own lives (within the limits set by the rights of others) and cannot contradict it, which the Theocracy of Farahstanlandia surely would.

Shorter version, you have the right to control your destiny, you do not have the right to control your neighbours.

“… you do not have the right to control your neighbours.”
That’s precisely the kind of oppression they’re fighting against. They’re merely fighting for their god-given right to impose the will of their imaginary friend on the rest of us. And by denying that we are making the baby Jeebus cry.

Individuals are free to buy an airplane ticket and fly off to any country in the world that will have them. If things are so grim here, then perhaps Farrah should start accumulating travel brochures and find a place that can appreciate his political and religious views.

Losing an election does not imply you get to keep the house and the kids. The states stay in the union. You and your fellow travelers leave.

Would someone tell the loonies that they will need an American passport to enter Canada? That fact might keep some out. Those that are still thinking about going north need to know we have *two* official languages, a Queen, universal health care and our dollar coin is called the loonie.

Isn’t there any uninhibited island in the US Virgin Islands they can take over and set up their own little country?

@Gregory in Seattle — thanks, that’s sort of what I was interested in. I get that at one level the right to secede was settled because of the war, but in an international arena the right to self-determination of peoples has been, albeit in a very spotty fashion, upheld. So I was thinking about where that would fall if anyone was serious about it.

Of course, the Native people have been serious about it forever, and the reason they haven’t been able to do it is simply that our government didn’t see Native folks as people, really, for a long time, and is powerful enough that it could unilaterally just steal everything. (Treaties? What treaties?) If the Natives had the kind of firepower that any other European power had the situation would have been different.

More seriously, it’s a lot tougher to make a secession case on historical grounds, though I’d say that the Navajo reservation, for instance, has a hell of a lot better case than the Tea Party people in Alabama.

Beyond the military answer to the question of secession and Texas v. White, you also have the wording of the Articles of Confederation and the rulings of the wold court. In the case of the former, the AoC establishes a “perpetual union,” which, while subject to modification, remains perpetual. In the latter case, the world court has consistently ruled against unilateral secession except in cases of human rights violations.